The Mage considered her, then spoke slowly. “There is a place nearby where water lies.”
Mari felt hope flare as her head came up. “Where?”
“The caravan.”
The hope vanished like a burst bubble. “Are you crazy, Mage? We can’t go back there.”
“Not at this moment. But you said they expect us to flee in panic. This is so. They will not expect us to stay near the caravan, to creep down when opportunity offers and find water there.”
Mari took shallow breaths, lost in thought as she considered the idea and how dry her mouth felt. The plan was insane, but somehow the totally emotionless way in which the Mage had outlined it made it seem almost possible. “It’s our only chance, isn’t it?”
“I can see no other action which would offer any chance.”
She could be too impulsive. Her teachers had warned her of it many times, but her impulsive decisions so far today had kept her and the Mage alive. “Then let’s go a little higher up before we start bearing back toward the pass. We’ll wait until it gets dark. Hopefully the bandits will be done looting the caravan by then.”
“The bandits did not seem concerned with loot,” the Mage pointed out again.
Mari nodded wearily. “That’s right. They blew up the front wagons. Why destroy loot? Even if they wanted me, why throw away the chance to pick up some loot on the side? And those weapons. And the explosives. How could any caravan carry enough loot to pay back those expenses? Mage Alain, I don’t expect you’ve priced out the cost of repeating rifles and bullets, but the Empire itself wouldn’t field an attack force like that unless it had a very good reason. There was an army’s worth of rifles there, and a treasure chest’s worth of gold used up in the bullets they’ve already fired today.”
“So you said. Capturing you must have been worth such a cost to them.”
Mari’s laugh once again turned into a choking cough. “Me? I’m skilled at what I do, but I’m not that conceited.”
The Mage watched her intently. “Perhaps your value is greater than you know, greater than any treasure spent in pursuit of you.”
The sort of statement any girl wanted to hear from a guy, and she had to hear it from a Mage with an expressionless face and a toneless voice. “I’m not that special. I have special talents, and the job in Ringhmon will be worth a lot to my Guild, but—” Mari realized that the Mage was now staring at her. “What?”
“Do you know of foresight?”
“Foresight? You mean fortune-telling?” Mari asked, not bothering to hide her automatic scorn.
“No,” the Mage replied with no sign of being offended. But then he wasn’t showing much sign of any feelings, so that didn’t mean anything. “True foresight tells what will happen and cannot be summoned reliably, nor is it easy to understand what can be seen or heard.” The Mage was looking directly at her, his expression somehow serious despite the lack of visible emotion. “I have developed a small gift of foresight. Some new danger awaits you in Ringhmon.”
Mari felt herself stiffening, rubbing her left arm slightly against her body so that she could feel the pistol resting in its shoulder holster under her jacket. “Please tell me you’re not threatening me.” Every warning she had ever been given about Mages came back with renewed force.
He gazed at her for a long moment before replying. “No. This danger does not come from me.”
Of course, Mari thought. It was a come-on. The Mage wanted her to offer something in exchange for more information. The oldest con game in the book, and he actually had the nerve to pull it while they were being chased by bandits. “What is it you want? How much money would it take for you to see more about this danger you claim I face?”
The Mage’s expression didn’t waver. “No sum of money or other favor would make a difference. What my foresight provided has no value to me. What little I know I will tell you.”
Surely he wanted money. Her Guild seniors had never wavered in their assessment of Mages. Money-grubbing frauds, fakes, liars, never to be trusted or spoken to. Or touched. How many rules had she broken today? “You don’t want any payment?”
He shook his head. “You made no contract for my services. Warning you may fall under my contract with the owners of the caravan. Either way, you owe me nothing, and I do not care for money.”
“How can you be so cold-blooded about everything?”
She could have sworn that one corner of the Mage’s mouth twitched upward for just an instant as he gestured toward the sun beating down upon them. “I am actually quite warm at the moment.”
Even though delivered in a voice without any feeling, that sign of humanity, or an actual sense of humor, caused Mari to forget her anger. There really was a boy behind that face Mage Alain used as a mask. He seemed absolutely sincere, and his refusal to consider payment was the opposite of what Mari had been told of Mages by her Guild. This Mage Alain was weird, but he didn’t seem to be evil. “So, all you know is that there is some danger for me in Ringhmon.”
“I heard words that hold no sense to me. Beware that in Ringhmon which thinks but does not live.”
Mari stopped breathing for a moment, certain that she had betrayed her shock. She inhaled slowly, trying to get herself back under control, wondering how a Mage could have acquired knowledge of the secret contract for which she had been ordered to Ringhmon. “Why are you saying that?”
“It is what I heard. I do not know the meaning. I know of nothing which thinks but does not live.”
“Not even any Mechanic device?” Mari pressed.
“I know nothing of any Mechanic device of any kind.” The Mage paused to look at her, his eyes the only thing alive in his face. “I have been in a Mage Guild Hall since I was five years old. There I was told that all Mechanic devices were tricks.”
Was he lying? He had to be lying. But why? And why declare he knew nothing more if the Mage was trying to extort something from her? “That’s what I was told about Mages, that everything you did was fake.”
Mage Alain appeared to think on that for a moment before answering. “We were both misinformed, then.”
He wasn’t making a joke this time. Or was he? Mari couldn’t tell. She wasn’t that good at understanding boys, who weren’t nearly as easy to figure out as a balky steam locomotive or fluid dynamics equations, but this Mage seemed far harder to understand than the apprentices and full Mechanics she had grown up around. “I can’t figure you out,” she said. “What do you want?”
“What I want does not matter.” He said it mechanically, if that description could ever fit a Mage, the words coming out as if they had been drilled into him.
Remembering some of the harsher harassment she had endured in her Mechanics Guild apprenticeship, Mari wondered what things had been like for this Mage. What had been done to him to make him seem so inhuman? “Why can’t you just act like everyone else?”
He gave her an inscrutable look. “I am not like everyone else.”
For some reason that sounded sad to her. “I ask your pardon, Mage.” The formal words almost stuck in her parched throat, but Mari forced them out, seeing real surprise flashing for a moment in the Mage’s eyes in response. “I’m a Mechanic, but I’m not closed-minded.” Which has got me in trouble already more times than I can count. “Thank you for your warning.”
The Mage shook his head. “Thank…you,” he repeated, the words sounding almost rusty as they came out, an intentness again showing in his eyes. “Thank you,” he repeated in a murmur to himself, a hint of understanding appearing in his voice. “I…remember. Asha.”
“Asha?”
“Long ago. I do not remember what to say.” He gave her a look in which no feeling could be seen. “What do I say?”